[release-6.6]feat(security): protect collector ServiceAccounts via ValidatingAdmissionPolicy

[vparfonov]

Description

Backport CVE-2026-10609 fix from master PR #3405 to release-6.6.

Implement Kubernetes ValidatingAdmissionPolicy to prevent unauthorized use of collector ServiceAccounts. A user who can create a ClusterLogForwarder can name any existing ServiceAccount; without protection, that user could create a Pod/Deployment referencing the collector SA and inherit its privileges (logging-scc, host mounts, token access).

Two ValidatingAdmissionPolicies enforce that collector ServiceAccounts can only be used by:

• CLO-managed workloads (created by the operator ServiceAccount)
• Built-in kube-system controllers propagating from those workloads (daemon-set-controller, replicaset-controller, deployment-controller, etc.)

The trust anchor is request.userInfo (authenticated creator), not Pod metadata, so copying collector labels/annotations/names does not bypass the check.

Changes for release-6.6:

• ValidatingAdmissionPolicy manifests with CEL expressions
• ConfigMap parameter tracking protected SAs and allowed creator identities
• Controller reconciling policies/bindings and syncing ConfigMap on CLF events
• ConfigMap self-healing via Watches predicate
• API availability check at manager startup (gracefully disabled if unavailable)
• Unit tests for policy logic and ConfigMap sync/self-healing
• envtest for CEL validation against real kube-apiserver
• E2E tests verifying policy enforcement
• Manual test script (hack/test-protected-sa.sh)
• Documentation on protected ServiceAccounts and ValidatingAdmissionPolicy

/cc
/assign @jcantrill

Links

• Depending on PR(s):
• GitHub issue:
• JIRA: https://redhat.atlassian.net/browse/LOG-10319
• Enhancement proposal:

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ci/prow/e2e-target	42b264d	link	true	/test e2e-target
ci/prow/functional-target	42b264d	link	true	/test functional-target

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